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Current & Forthcoming Titles

Jennifer AckerJennifer Acker is founder and Editor in Chief of The Common. She is the author of Limits of the World (Delphinium). Her short stories, essays, criticism, and translations have been published in the Washington Post, n+1,Guernica, Slate, and Ploughshares, among and other places. She has an MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars and teaches at Amherst College. She has received writing fellowships from Vermont Studio Center and Ledig House/Writers OMI.

Bethany BallBethany Ball’s debut novel, What to Do About the Solomons, was published by Atlantic Monthly Press in March, 2017, and is a finalist for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. She was born and raised in Detroit and lives in New York with her family.

Brooke BarkerBrooke Barker is a writer and illustrator. Her first book, Sad Animal Facts, is a New York Times and Los Angeles Times best-seller, and has been published in countless languages if you can’t count higher than five. Her work has been published in the Guardian, the Observer, and Lenny Letter, and she has illustrated for Coca-Cola and Nike. She and her husband Boaz live in Amsterdam and their house has at least one rat living in it.

Annie DeWittAnnie DeWitt is a novelist, short story writer and essayist. Her writing has appeared in Granta, Esquire, Tin House, Guernica, The Believer, BOMB, The Iowa Review, Electric Literature, The American Reader, Poets and Writers, amongst others, and been anthologized and translated into several languages. Her debut story collection Closest Without Going Over was shortlisted for the Mary McCarthy Award. Her debut novel White Nights In Split Town City made the NYTimes “Short List” and was heralded by BookForum, amongst others, as “masterful” and “full of syntactic daring.” She is a Co-Founder of the lit mag Gigantic and a recipient of a MacDowell Fellowship. Annie teaches at Columbia University (where she received her MFA), Bennington, Bard, Barnard, and The New School.

Katherine DykstraKatherine Dykstra is the author of What Happened to Paula O. forthcoming from W.W. Norton. A journalist, essayist, editor and teacher, her work has appeared in the Washington Post, Poets and Writers, Real Simple, The Common, Crab Orchard Review, Shenandoah, and Gulf Coast among other publications. She was a finalist for the John Guyon Literary Nonfiction Prize and has twice been included in the “Notables” section of Best American Essays. Her current work was included in Creative Capital’s “On Our Radar,” a list of projects by “artists to watch.” She lives with her husband and two children.

Dionne FordDionne Ford is the author of the memoir Finding Josephine, forthcoming from G.P. Putnam’s Sons and co-editor of the anthology Shared Legacies: Narratives of Race and Reconciliation by Descendants of Slaveholders and the Enslaved, forthcoming from Rutgers University Press. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, LitHub, More, Rumpus and Ebony and won awards from the National Association of Black Journalists and the Newswomens’ Club of New York. She received a 2018 Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. Other honors include grants from the Sustainable Arts Foundation and the Geraldine R. Dodge foundation and fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, Hedgebrook and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She has an MFA in Creative Writing from New York University and lives in New Jersey with her husband and two daughters.

Melissa GinsburgMelissa Ginsburg is the author of the noir novel Sunset City and the poetry collection Dear Weather Ghost, as well as two poetry chapbooks: Arbor and Double Blind. She is currently working on a novel set in New Orleans. Her poems have appeared in Fence, Denver Quarterly, Field, Pleiades, The Iowa Review, Blackbird, and other magazines. She has received support from the Mississippi Arts Commission, the Ucross Foundation, and the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Mississippi. Originally from Houston, Texas, Ginsburg attended the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She is an assistant professor of creative writing and literature at the University of Mississippi in Oxford.

Lauren HolmesLauren Holmes’s short story collection, Barbara the Slut and Other People, was published by Riverhead Books in 2015, and named a best book of the year by NPR, Gawker, Publisher’s Weekly, and more. Her work has appeared in Granta, where she was a 2014 New Voice, and in Guernica. She is currently the Newhouse Visiting Professor of Creative Writing at Wellesley College.

Bill KildayBill Kilday served as Marketing Director for Keyhole, the Mountain View, California-based startup that was bought by Google in 2004 and turned into Google Earth in June of 2005. Kilday was Head of Marketing for Google’s Geo division for three years, including during the launch of Google Maps and Google Earth in 2005. Never Lost Again: The Google Mapping Revolution that Sparked New Industries and Augmented Our Reality is his first book. He lives in Austin, Texas.

Tim LaneTim Lane is an Ignatz Award nominated graphic novelist whose books include The Lonesome Go (Fantagraphics Books, 2014), and Abandoned Cars (Fantagraphics Books, 2008). Lane’s comics are widely published in anthologies, including The Best of American Comics series (2017), Fantagraphic’s Hotwire and MOME, the Kean Review, Smoke Signal, and DC Comic’s Bizarro World. He also contributes infographics to the Believer Magazine, and publishes the comic book Happy Hour in America. He and his work are also featured in the recent publications, We Told You So: Comics As Art (Fantagraphics Books), and The Outlaw Bible of American Art (Last Gasp). He is currently working on an “interpretive” biographical graphic novel about the actor, Steve McQueen, called Just Like Steve McQueen.

Marjorie LiuMarjorie Liu is an attorney and New York Times Bestselling author of over seventeen novels. Her comic book work includes Han Solo, Black Widow, X-23, and Astonishing X-Men, which was nominated for a GLAAD Media Award for its “outstanding representation of the LGBT Community”. Her current project is Monstress, a dark steampunk fantasy that Entertainment Weekly named the “Best New Original Series of 2015” and that was nominated for two Eisner awards for best new series and best writer. It hit #2 on the New York Times Graphic novels bestseller list, and received rave reviews from Kirkus, School Library Journal, and Neil Gaiman, who called it “remarkable”. Liu has appeared on MSNBC, CNN, MTV, and has been profiled on NPR’s All Things Considered, the New Yorker Radio Hour, the Hollywood Reporter, and USA Today. She is a frequent lecturer and guest speaker, and teaches a course on comic book writing at MIT. She lives in Cambridge, MA.

Ömer Zülfü LivaneliÖmer Zülfü Livaneli, born in 1946, is a bestselling Turkish author and poet who is considered one of the most significant and influential authors and intellectuals of his time. His acclaimed novels Bliss (2002), Leyla’s House (2006), Serenade for Nadia (2011), and My Brother’s Story (2013) have been highly praised by critics and literary figures, from Louis de Bernières to Yashar Kemal. His works, political activities, and global cultural contributions were recognized in 1995 when he was appointed a UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador. He resigned this post in 2016, in protest of the UN’s holding a humanitarian summit in Turkey even as the Turkish Army was bombing Kurdish villages and historical sites. Livaneli was imprisoned several times during the coup of 1971 because of his political views and had to leave Turkey in 1972. He has lived in exile in Stockholm, Paris, Athens, and New York, where he met and collaborated with artists and intellectuals including Elia Kazan, Arthur Miller, James Baldwin, and Peter Ustinov. Livaneli returned to Turkey in 1984, and served a term in the Turkish Parliament as well as on the Council of Europe.

Ömer Livaneli’s novels, distinct for their deep humanism and their interwoven, diverse historical and social contexts, have been translated into 40 languages; inspired film and stage adaptations; and won numerous Turkish and international literary awards.

Tom ManningTom Manning was raised in Enumclaw, Washington. His first graphic novel, RACECAR, was published in 1999 while attending Occidental College in Los Angeles. He followed it with Runoff, serially published between 2000-2007, and republished as a single volume in 2015. A graduate of Yale School of Art’s graphic design MFA program, he has collaborated as a writer, illustrator, and designer a number of books including Eating Animals with Jonathan Safran Foer. Manning currently lives with his wife and two children in Oakland, California. He enjoys cats, Earl Grey tea, his parents, and ghost stories. His hobbies include work.

Simeon MarsalisSimeon Marsalis was raised in New Rochelle, NY. He attended New Rochelle High School before doing a year of post-graduate study at Brewster Academy in Wolfeboro, NH. He graduated from the University of Vermont in 2013, with a Bachelor’s degree in Religion. His first novel, As Lie Is To Grin, was published by Catapult Books on October 10th, 2017. It was shortlisted for the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize. Simeon is currently a Henry Rutgers Fellow at Rutgers-Newark University.

Pablo MedinaPablo Medina’s work embodies the themes of history and migration with passion, intelligence, and humor. He is the author of sixteen books, among them the novels The Cigar Roller and Cubop City Blues, the poetry collections The Man Who Wrote on Water and The Island Kingdom, and the memoir Exiled Memories: A Cuban Childhood. His translations include García Lorca’s Poet in New York and Alejo Carpentier’s The Kingdom of This World (forthcoming Fall 2018). Among his many awards are grants from the Rockefeller and Guggenheim Foundations and the National Endowment for the Arts. Currently, he is Distinguished Writer-in-Residence at Emerson College in Boston.

Elizabeth PolinerElizabeth Poliner is the author of the novel As Close to Us as Breathing (Lee Boudreaux Books), which was an Amazon Best Book of 2016 and a February 2017 Pennie’s Pick. Her previous works are a novel in stories, Mutual Life & Casualty, and a poetry collection, What You Know in Your Hands. Her stories and poems have appeared in the Michigan Quarterly Review, Kenyon Review, Southern Review, Colorado Review, and TriQuarterly, among other journals. Her awards include the 2017 Kafka Prize, fiction fellowships to the Sewanee and Wesleyan writers’ conferences, and residencies at Yaddo and the MacDowell Colony. She teaches at Hollins University.

Nicolaia RipsNicolaia Rips attended LaGuardia High School for the Performing Arts in New York City (class of 2016), where she was co-editor-in-chief of LaGuardia’s literary magazine, LaGuardia Magazine. Her memoir Trying to Float recounts her childhood growing up at the Chelsea Hotel. She is now a student at Brown University. You can follow her on instagram @nrips

Jess RuliffsonJess Ruliffson is a nonfiction cartoonist. She is the author of the forthcoming book Where Eden Once Stood, (Fantagraphics, 2019). Her work has appeared in the Gainesville Sun, the Nib, BuzzFeed, the Boston Globe, Wilson Quarterly, and Pantheon Books. Her comic, I Trained to Fight the Enemy, was shortlisted for Slate’s 2017 Cartoonist Studio Prize. She teaches at the School of Visual Arts in New York City.

Joanne SerlingJoanne Serling’s debut novel, Good Neighbors, will be published by Twelve in February 2018. A former magazine editor, Serling studied and taught fiction at The Writers Studio in New York City. Her short stories have appeared in New Ohio Review and North American Review. She lives outside of New York with her husband and children and is currently at work on her second book.

Mark SloukaMark Slouka is the internationally recognized author of seven books. Both his fiction and nonfiction have been translated into sixteen languages. His stories have twice been selected for inclusion in Best American Short Stories, and his essays have appeared three times for Best American Essays. His stories, “Crossing” and “The Hare’s Mask,” have also been selected for the PEN/O.Henry Prize Stories. In 2008, he was a finalist for the British Book Award for his novel The Visible World, and his 2011 collection of essays, Essays from the Nick of Time, received the PEN/Diamonstein-Speilvogel Award for the Art of the Essay. A contributing editor to Harpers Magazine since 2001, his work also appears in Ploughshares, Orion Magazine, Bomb, The Paris Review, Agni, and Granta. A Guggenheim and NEA fellowship recipient, he has taught literature and writing at Harvard, Columbia, and University of Chicago. He is currently living with his family in the Czech Republic, and Brewster, NY.

Deb SperaDeborah Spera is currently enrolled in the Writers Certificate program at UCLA. She is a two-time nominee and finalist for the Kirkwood literary prize as well as The Montana Prize in Fiction. She was the recipient of the 1888 Plaza literary Prize for her novella Her Southern Heritage. She has been published in Sixfold, The Wascana Review, Pennsylvania English and L.A. Yoga Journal. She’s the author of two produced plays through Actors Theater Of Louisville, and has held residency at Hedgebrook, a writer’s retreat for women. Born and raised in Kentucky by teenage parents, she now resides in Los Angeles where she owns her own television company, One-Two Punch Productions. She has executive produced such shows as Criminal Minds, Army Wives, Reaper, and Finding Carter. Her debut novel, Alligator will be published by Park Row Books/HarperCollins in 2019.

Brad WatsonBrad Watson is the author of Last Days of the Dog-Men, The Heaven of Mercury, Aliens in the Prime of Their Lives, and Miss Jane. He received The Sue Kaufman Prize and The Award in Letters from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, The Southern Book Critics Circle Award in Fiction, The Harper Lee Award, and the Award in Fiction from The Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters. Finalist for The National Book Award, The PEN/Faulkner Prize in Fiction, The Wellcome Prize (UK). NEA Grant, Lannan Foundation Residency, Guggenheim Fellowship. Originally from Mississippi, he teaches at the University of Wyoming.

Aurelia WillsAurelia Wills has had short work published in The Kenyon Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, CALYX, The Common, American Fiction Vol. 12, and other journals and anthologies. Her debut novel Someone I Wanted To Be was published by Candlewick Press in September 2016. She has worked with immigrants and GED students, and has taught at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis.

Martin WilsonMartin Wilson was born in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. He received a BA from Vanderbilt University and an MFA from the University of Florida. His debut novel, What They Always Tell Us (Delacorte Press, 2008), won the Alabama Author Award for best young adult book. His second novel, We Now Return to Regular Life, will be published by Dial Books for Young Readers in Summer 2017. His work has appeared in Tin House, One Teen Story, the Lambda Literary Review, and many other publications. He lives in New York City.

Spencer WiseSpencer Wise is the author of the novel The Emperor of Shoes (HarperCollins, 2018). Born in Boston, he is a graduate of Tufts University and the University of Texas at Austin. He recently won the 2017 Gulf Coast Prize in nonfiction. His work has appeared in journals such as Narrative Magazine, Hayden’s Ferry Review, The Florida Review, and New Ohio Review. Wise teaches at Florida State University and lives in Tallahassee.

Authors with Works in Progress

Joshua BaldwinJoshua Baldwin’s dispatches from Las Vegas have appeared at The Paris Review, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and Eephus. He is the author of The Wilshire Sun, a novella published by Turtle Point Press, and his short fiction and poetry have appeared at n+1, The Brooklyn Rail, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, and others. He was born in New York City, graduated from the University of Chicago, and lives in Los Angeles.

Mark BarrMark Barr has been awarded fellowships from Blue Mountain Center, I-Park Artists¹ Enclave, Jentel Arts, Kimmel Harding Nelson Center, Millay Colony, and Yaddo. He lives with his wife and sons in Arkansas, where he develops software and bakes bread.

Andy BennettAndy Bennett lives in Minnesota with his wife Katy, son Theo, and Pippa, their Newfoundland nanny. He has an MFA in fiction from NYU’s Writer’s Workshop in Paris and was a member of The Loft Literary Mentorship Series in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Andy is the recipient of an ARAC/McKnight Artist Fellowship Grant, a Minnesota State Arts Board Artist Initiative Grant, and a participation trophy from his sixth-grade spelling bee.

Christina BernsteinChristina Bernstein is a writer currently living in London with her husband and their little dog, Bean. She was the CEO and Founder of Boobypack, a clothing company that made a pocketed sports bra (AKA the fannypack for your rack). She launched her company on Kickstarter (doubling her fundraising goal), won Katie Couric’s $10k prize for female entrepreneurship and was featured on abc’s Shark Tank where she secured a deal with Barbara Corcoran. BB (Before Boobypack)– Christina graduated magna cum laude from Georgetown University in 2011 with a B.A. in English and a focus on Creative Writing. She then earned a Publishing Certificate from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism before working as an Assistant Editor at Time Inc.

F.C. BrandtF.C. Brandt is an award winning multi-media artist, and works as a professional illustrator. His film and video productions have been featured on the Independent Film Channel, in the San Jose Museum of Art, the Cartoon Art Museum, and in universities around the world. F.C. holds a B.F.A. from U.C. Santa Cruz, and is a member of the Art Directors Guild.

Justin CharityJustin Charity is a novelist and journalist from Richmond, Virginia. He covers music and politics for The Ringer, and his writing has also appeared on Gawker, Grantland, The New Republic, and Complex. Formerly based in Washington, D.C., Charity spent several years working in public relations, with a particular interest in speech-writing and crisis communications. Charity completed his undergraduate studies at Georgetown University, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in Government. He’s currently based in New York.

Rachel M. HansonRachel M. Hanson is the 2017/2018 O’Connor Fellow in Nonfiction at Colgate University. Her essays and poems can be found in The Iowa Review, Best New Poets 2016, Creative Nonfiction, The South Dakota Review, American Literary Review, The Minnesota Review, Entropy Magazine, Ninth Letter, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA from the University of Utah and a PhD in Literature and Nonfiction from the University of Missouri. During the summer months she runs the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon.

Patrick HilsmanPatrick Hilsman is a New York-based journalist and analyst with experience covering the MENA region with a focus on the Syrian conflict, international weapons traffic, and refugee rights. He was one of the only American journalists to have visited East Aleppo between the expulsion of ISIS in early 2014 and the fall of the city to regime forces in late 2016. Hilsman has appeared on BBC World, MSNBC, among others, and has written for a variety of publications including Middle East Eye, VICE, The Daily Beast, The Seattle Globalist, and the Christian Science Monitor. His reporting on drone proliferation in the Syrian conflict has been cited by experts at Bard University Drone Center, and Oxford University.

Esther Levy-ChehebarEsther Levy-Chehebar was raised in Brooklyn, New York. She is a graduate of The New School’s MFA Writing program and is a contributor to Man Repeller and Glamour. She was previously a writer-in-residence at Spruceton Inn and was selected to participate in the Tin House Winter Workshop. She is currently working on a novel loosely based on her Syrian-Jewish upbringing. Esther’s hobbies include being walked by her dog and watching her mother cook, which she does at least two times a week.

Alexander LumansAlexander Lumans was the Spring 2014 Philip Roth Resident at Bucknell University. He was also awarded a fellowship to the 2015 Arctic Circle Residency, where he sailed around Svalbard, Norway in a tall ship. His fiction has appeared in Gulf Coast, TriQuarterly, Story Quarterly, American Short Fiction, Cincinnati Review, among others. He has been awarded fellowships to MacDowell, Yaddo, VCCA, Blue Mountain Center as well as scholarships to Sewanee and Bread Loaf. He received the 2015 Wabash Fiction Prize from Sycamore Review, the 2013 Gulf Coast Fiction Prize, and the 2011 Barry Hannah Fiction Prize from Yalobusha Review. He graduated from the M.F.A. Fiction Program at Southern Illinois University Carbondale.

Rachael MadduxRachael Maddux’s essays, reviews, and features have appeared in Virginia Quarterly Review,The Oxford American, The Paris Review Daily, The Believer, Guernica, and other places. Her work has been noted in Best American Sports Writing 2016 and collected in Best American Travel Writing 2015. In 2010 she was a finalist for a National Magazine Award in Reviews & Criticism. She was raised in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and lives in Atlanta, Georgia. She’s at work on a memoir about growing up mortal in the South at the turn of the 21st century.

Echo PaneEcho Pane is a 2015 Lambda Literary Fellow. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Tin House; Cosmonauts Avenue; and No Tokens. She holds an MFA in Fiction from New York University and is a bookseller at Greenlight Bookstore in Brooklyn.

Jordan RawlinsJordan Rawlins is a Southern California native who made a living as a poker player, stuntman, and trained as a magician, before finding his place as a writer. His 2016 children’s movie, Rescue Dogs, opened in theaters nationwide. He has worked with Netflix, Maker Studios and Showtime on various projects. His stage plays have been seen in theaters across the country and in London. He is the author of the 2013 novel, Monsters of the Apocalypse. His free time is spent fly-fishing and volunteering with the charity 826LA.

Chris RussellChris Russell is a visual artist whose art and writing has been published in The Believer, Literary Hub, Muftah, Poetry Ireland Review, and Higher Arc, among other places. He is the associate art editor and contributor illustrator for Stonecutter Journal and is currently working on a graphic translation of Witold Gombrowicz’s Cosmos, forthcoming from Siglio Press. He lives in Queens, NY, and works in the field of deaf-blindness and special education.

Steve SandersSteve Sanders was born and raised in Oklahoma. He studied at the creative writing programs at Boston University and the University of Houston and worked as a bookseller, copywriter, and teacher. He lives in Oklahoma City.

Jennifer Dabbs SciubbaJennifer Dabbs Sciubba is an Associate Professor in the International Studies department at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee and a Global Fellow with the Environmental Change and Security Program at the Wilson Center in Washington, DC. Dr. Sciubba has studied at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Rostock, Germany, and is a former demographics consultant to the US Office of the Secretary of Defense (Policy). Her research has appeared in multiple academic journals and national news outlets. Dr. Sciubba is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and Phi Beta Kappa. She received her Ph.D. and M.A. from the University of Maryland and her B.A. from Agnes Scott College.

Kawai Strong WashburnKawai Strong Washburn was born and raised on the Hamakua coast of Hawai’i. His short fiction has appeared in Mcsweeney’s, Electric Literature, and Best American Nonrequired Reading, among others. He has also received scholarships from the Tin House and Bread Loaf writer’s workshops.

Bob Wiltfong

Bob Wiltfong is a former correspondent on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and an Emmy award winning TV news reporter. Some know him as well for his work as “The World’s Greatest Spokesperson in the World” for Nationwide Insurance in TV commercials or as a corporate trainer of presentation skills for several Fortune 500 companies. Although his job credits are varied, his work as a world-class story teller are consistent and outstanding. Bob currently works in the corporate world as a content creator and is putting the finishing touches on his first published work on business speech.

Allison WrightAllison Wright is the executive editor of the Virginia Quarterly Review. She also serves as president of the nonprofit literary organization WriterHouse and editor of Tiny Hardcore Press. Her writing has appeared in the Atlantic, VQR, Popular Mechanics, the Texas Observer, Literary Hub, the Rumpus, and elsewhere. She is a member of the American Society of Magazine Editors, the National Book Critics Circle, and the Overseas Press Club. She holds a PhD from the University of Texas at Austin.

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Aragi, Inc. represents a wide range of fiction, nonfiction, and graphic novels. We do not represent screenplays. Submitted queries should include a cover letter with your name, a short bio, the title of the work, and a brief synopsis. Manuscripts should be attached as .PDF or .docx files and should be titled in the format “Last Name_Manuscript Title”, e.g. “Ginsburg_Sunset City”. Queries may also be submitted through the mail and should include a self-addressed stamped envelope. We do not accept queries over the phone.

Please note that we are not responsible for lost or damaged materials. Due to the volume of submissions we receive, please note that a typical reply may take anywhere from six to eight weeks.